Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You Page 13

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. She’s long gone from our mountains now and I’ve heard some people say good riddance. I wouldn’t say so myself. I don’t believe in judging people. We’re all of us sinners in the eyes of the Lord.”

  I couldn’t help giggling again. My mother and grandmother spent fascinating hours together, gossiping about neighbors near and far, of this generation and the others, weighing their nice qualities and totting up with special precision their foibles and shortcomings. My father once told me of a dream he’d suffered. “The last trump had sounded, Jess, and it was Judgment Day and I was about to shuffle into that great courtroom in the sky and I stood there before the tall doors, thinking, Well, if it’s Saint Peter and the Archangel Michael and God Himself and Judge Lynch thrown in, I’ve got a slim chance, but if it is your mother and grandmother sitting on the bench, my ass is hickory-smoked Carolina barbecue.”

  “What are you laughing about?” my mother asked.

  “Nothing.”

  My answer didn’t content her, but she was anxious to pull ahead with her story. She told me that the woman who seemed to fall most deeply under Frawley Harper’s spell was Aunt Chancy. “I don’t know what exactly went on between them,” she said, “but there were communications and there were secret meetings.… Well, as secret as ever meetings between lovers can be in small settlements where everybody knows all there is about everybody else. To tell the truth, I think that Chancy was willing to give herself to Frawley. I’m not saying she did, mind you; I don’t know that anything so dire ever took place. What I do know is that she and Uncle Dave had not been getting along comfortable together since the first week they were married. In those very first days, Aunt Chancy must have found out things about her husband that sickened her to the core. And don’t ask me what kind of things, because I don’t know and will not repeat the horrible rumors that were going around.

  “They’d been wearing on each other from the beginning. Lots of women would have worn down after six long years and given in and let the man have his stinking brutal ways with them, but Chancy wouldn’t, and her refusal was the point of conflict, and it was a conflict ready to spill into outright feud. Then Frawley Harper showed up like a dashing movie star from a world we girls could only dream about, and his appearance might have saved Uncle Dave’s life.

  “For the moment, anyhow.

  “Because, you see, it’s like that pressure cooker I mentioned before. Aunt Chancy had built up so much red fury that something scary was bound to happen, but then when Frawley dropped down out of the sky, it let some of the steam out of the situation. Aunt Chancy’s attention was diverted from her anger as soon as her eye lit upon the handsome young man when she saw him in Plemmons’s grocery store and post office, sipping Co-Colas and singing pretty songs from faraway places. Songs in French and other strange tongues. His particular favorite was that western song ‘Oh Shenandoah,’ which he said he’d learned on a Mississippi flatboat. It was there in Plemmons’s your grandmother first heard that song, and afterward she undertook to teach it to Aunt Samantha, but it’s not an easy one to learn; they both said they had trouble getting it right.

  “Anyhow, he’d sip his cold drink and tell tales of wild exploits, not only to Plemmons’s usual crowd of tobacco-spitting loafers who infested that place like corn worms but also to others, who only wanted a breath from the outside world. We were short on novelty in those days, Jess. No radio or television, just talking and singing and preaching and playing instruments and practical jokes that folks used to call ‘rusties.’ We had to entertain ourselves.… Well, we had to do everything for ourselves, just about.

  “So Frawley Harper fired the imaginations of men and women alike, but Aunt Chancy was the woman who gave him the straightforward inviting look. Which he answered with one as bold or bolder, like any careless sailor strutting a fiddler’s green. Because she was a handsome thing in those days, Jess. She had those bright green eyes and that honey red hair and the confident carriage of a woman who knows her worth and will possess her desires. She had a fine laugh, too, frank and easy and unashamed. When people heard that laugh, they turned around to see.

  “And that was all that was needed, really, just that one exchange of glances in Plemmons’s store. They understood each other in a single moment. But everybody else who was there understood, too, and they could barely wait to get home to set their tattle tongues a-wagging. In fact, I suppose a lot of them didn’t get home, but stopped off at a neighbor’s house on the way so they could be the first.

  “It won’t sound like much to you, just a man and a woman and one look between them. But those were different times and old-fashioned ways and the grown-ups were serious in their passions once they gave them rein. Aunt Chancy was past flirting age and was a married woman. But that look she gave Frawley—well, she might as well have lit a signal brand and waved it over her head. Everybody knew, or thought they knew, what was going to pass between them, and those idlers were already looking forward to the next chapter.

  “Because it was as good as a settled fact that Uncle Dave would hear of the episode and would slay one or both of the amorous couple if anything happened between them, and maybe whether anything happened or not.”

  * * *

  “But the thing was, he could have stopped the course of events. All he had to do was tell Aunt Chancy about the tales he heard from every side and say that she had better not find herself in the same house or holler with Frawley Harper again or he would take bloody measures. Yet he kept silent. He didn’t say a mumbling word to her, but only let her think, as blind lovers will do, that she was getting away with something. He wore a white straw hat, did Uncle Dave, wore it winter and summer, indoors and out, and when he wanted to sign that you were talking about a matter of no interest to him or showing him a thing he didn’t care to see, he would pull that white hat down over his eyes—to let you know he had shut you out and was paying you no mind. It was the rudest thing to do, but we were resigned to the fact that Uncle Dave presented no study in edifying manners.

  “They hadn’t been married all that long. Six years, because they both married late. But Jess, he must have hated Aunt Chancy with a brimstone hate, because he planned to let the foolish lovers have one sugar taste of each other, just enough to make their appetites restless, and then he would slaughter Frawley Harper and Aunt Chancy would live the rest of her days with that single precious hour of passion haunting her. Or maybe after the memory had tortured her a while, he would murder her, too.”

  “Why didn’t Aunt Chancy just divorce him?” I asked.

  My mother eyed me in startled disbelief. “Divorce? Jess, folks in that time and place had never heard the word divorce. When you got married, you made a vow to God and you kept your vow whatever the cost.”

  “Sounds like the cost could get to be awful high.”

  She shrugged. “You took the vow and you kept it.”

  “Anyhow,” my mother continued, “the illicit loving pair had kept their secret appointment and planned to meet again in the shining Maytime, with all the dogwoods abloom. It must have been the happiest day of Aunt Chancy’s grown-up life, the happiest she had been since she was a pigtail girl playing in the creek or dressing up a baby doll. I don’t know what went on during their hour together on a fine Saturday morning, but for Aunt Chancy all the world was wrapped up in that hour.

  “Then her heart nearly failed her when she came down the trail through the pine grove and saw her husband sitting on the little porch of their cabin with his thirty-thirty rifle laid across his knees. That must have been the evilest sight she’d ever seen, even after six years with Uncle Dave Gudger. But she would never show that man any fear, you will count on that. She stopped for a moment at the edge of the woods and breathed a deep breath and walked out into the yard as easy as she could, knowing that of course he knew about her and Frawley and might just shoot her the way he would shoot any varmint—groundhog or squirrel or whatever—he found crossi
ng his yard.

  “Yet she didn’t quake nor tremble, but only kept a steady gait and came up the steps and stood on the porch there, looking down at her husband. His white hat was pulled down so she couldn’t see his face and he talked from beneath it, just as calm and cool as springwater. ‘Chancy,’ he said, ‘back in the corner of the closet shelf in the bedroom is an old black felt hat that used to belong to my daddy. I want you to dust it off and brush it up and bring it to me.’

  “She didn’t say a word, but only obeyed him to the letter, bringing the scrubbed-up hat out to the porch and laying it carefully on top of the rifle in his lap.

  “Uncle Dave took it up and turned it over and around in his hands, inspecting it slowly. Then he stood up and tipped back the brim of his white hat and looked straight at her. She was a tall woman and he only overtopped her by an inch or two, so they were looking right into the eyes of each other. He had his thirty-thirty in his left hand and the old black hat in his right hand, and when he spoke, it was in the same calm, cool voice as before.

  “‘Chancy,’ he said, ‘I’m going down to Sugar Camp and drink a noggin of whiskey with my brother Bill. Then along about dark I’m going a-hunting alone. I’ll be gone the whole night. I expect I’ll make my kill, but there ain’t no way to be certain. You’ll know, though, when you see me come walking up the road there whether I done any good or not. If I’ve struck my mark, I’ll be wearing my daddy’s old black hat. If I’ve made a miss, I’ll be wearing my white. If I’m wearing this here white hat, there’ll be a matter to discuss between you and me. If I’m wearing the black un, won’t be need for any word ever to be said.’

  “And that was that. Uncle Dave hitched his rifle stock up under his arm and held that black hat by its rumply crown and down the road he marched through the morning sunlight, with his wife staring after him from the porch and thinking thoughts you and I could never guess at. She stood there a long time after he was gone, looking down the empty road and hearing the robins and redbirds and jays singing. If she decided anything, she must have decided it then.”

  * * *

  “Of course, I have to guess about a lot of what went on. The only account I ever got was from Aunt Samantha, and she had to piece the story together bit by little bit from what Aunt Chancy said after her mind had wandered. Who can tell what is true to a disordered mind? It’s like trying to figure out the meaning of a dream; some of it seems so clear and straight, you think you know, but then the rest of it is a wild jumble and takes away your confidence about what you thought you understood.

  “A few things are for certain.

  “Frawley Harper disappeared. No clue to his whereabouts has ever been discovered.

  “Uncle Dave Gudger disappeared, too. The only trace of him was that ugly old black felt hat on Aunt Chancy’s head.

  “The law came to inquire and his brother Bill came around, snorting and making empty threats, but it was too late. Aunt Chancy’s mind was gone. She wasn’t the same woman as before in any regard. That glory of honey red hair had turned streaky dark and gray. Her clear, bright eyes had gone as muddy as a flooded pond. That wonderful laugh of hers that cheered every heart had changed into a crazy cackle and her singing voice that had lifted up one verse and one verse only of ‘Oh Shenandoah’ had become a howl that made your very bones ache and burn. Away … away … away away away … Her hands that used to be so clever at the cookstove and the quilting frame could only make those eerie sawing motions, not like somebody sawing logs or sewing on a shirtwaist, but more like a butcher hacking at a fresh beef and sawing its bones.”

  “She killed him,” I said. “Aunt Chancy killed her husband.”

  “Well, that’s what everybody thought. But nothing was ever proven. Aunt Chancy couldn’t say anything sensible and no evidence was ever brought to light. Officially at least.”

  “What do you mean, ‘officially’?”

  “There might have been some evidence if they’d looked in the right places. To tell the truth, though, Uncle Dave Gudger was nobody’s favorite, not even his brother Bill’s. I think they may not have searched very hard.”

  “What was the unofficial evidence?”

  “It wasn’t evidence,” she said. “It might have been a clue if anybody had been willing to poke around.”

  “What was it?”

  “Something Aunt Sam told me she wasn’t real sure about. She went out one afternoon to make use of Aunt Chancy’s outhouse. Happened to glance through the hole down into the pit and thought she saw a hand down there. But it was a deep pit, nine feet at least, and she wasn’t certain. The light wasn’t real good, she said. She leaned over to look again and saw something she thought might be a man’s head with the eyes still staring. But maybe it was just a crumpled-up sheet of newspaper or a page of the Sears and Roebuck catalog. She vowed and declared that she couldn’t really tell.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Nothing.… Well, she didn’t use that jakes. Not then and not for the next five weeks that she stayed with Aunt Chancy. She went up into the pine grove above the house, she told me, and she looked about smartly for copperhead snakes.”

  “What happened to Aunt Chancy?”

  “Her tortured heart came apart to pieces and she died howling. The last word she uttered was from that song ‘Oh Shenandoah.’ Away away, was what she said, but it was just the same as saying the name of Frawley Harper with her last breath.”

  “Was Aunt Sam there when she died?”

  “No. She had to go back home. Aunt Chancy didn’t die till a year later when the dogwoods came white again in the moonlight pouring down on Twichell Mountain. Her daughter was there and some other kin. They all said that her last word was Away.”

  “That’s a scary story,” I said.

  My mother pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. “Get out and I’ll show you where,” she said. She raised her left arm and pointed. We stood at the dusty, weed-choked ditch, looking north. “You can’t see it from here now, but there was a road that ran along that upper ridge and then around to the right and on to the top. Aunt Chancy lived about halfway up, but nobody lives there now. All the land’s been sold off as a preserve to a hunting club and they’ve let the road go bad on purpose. Takes a four-wheel drive to climb that mountain now.”

  “I’d like to hear her sing it,” I said.

  “Hear who sing what?”

  “Aunt Sam. I’d like to hear her do ‘Oh Shenandoah.’”

  She looked at me like I was a lunatic descended from the planet Jupiter. “Jess, maybe your teachers are right to make you out such a keen scholar, but you don’t have the common sense of a wall-eyed mule. And that’s the truth. Do you think Aunt Samantha would be singing that song after what she went through? If you don’t get some good sense to go with all those brains you’re supposed to have, you might as well open up your head and feed them to the barn cats.”

  * * *

  Most of my mother’s suggestions didn’t fire my imagination, but that one did. I thought of unlatching the back of my cranium and taking out my brain like taking a pan of corn bread out of the oven and setting it down in front of the half-wild calico cat we called Britches. Then I rejected the fancy. If I did that, I wouldn’t have any memory. I’d forget what I’d heard about Aunt Sam and my grandmother and my mother and what I thought I’d learned about the nature of music.

  THE SHINING WOMAN

  When I asked my grandmother to tell me another story about Aunt Sherlie Howes, she seemed pleased to do so. “I don’t know that a lot of boys your age would take such an interest in old folks and past times,” she said. I might have replied that I hadn’t always been interested; four years ago, when I was only eleven, I cared for no one’s goings-on but my own. Now, though, I had a hunger to listen almost as urgent as my hunger to read books. I had begun to feel that Time Past contained secret messages meant for me. In midnight dark I would lie in bed and imagine I heard whispers from Time Past. It wasn’t the dead people s
peaking; that was a dry whispery sound like Uncle Runkin’s voice when he spoke so lovingly of graveyards. This voice was a murmur warm but muffled, the syllables flowing together like drops of rain joining in streams on a windowpane. Time Past was as full of story as the Junior Classics Library in its twelve colorful volumes in my brick and board bookcase; the persons my mother and grandmother told me of were as startling as the planet Saturn swimming in space, the way it was pictured in my father’s discarded general science textbooks.

  “What kind of story did you want to hear about Aunt Sherlie?”

  “One where she’s smart,” I said. “One where she figures out things nobody else could understand.”

  “She was like that most of the time.… I heard tell you used to like ghostly stories. Have you got tired out with them?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  * * *

  “Well, I don’t know whether you believe in hants or not,” my grandmother began. “There’s a lot to be said both ways. There’s ghosts in the Bible, and maybe that ought to settle the whole question. But a lot of people don’t believe, thinking it’s all old-time superstition and rank foolishness. I won’t tell you what I think or what I’ve seen. Seems to me a ghost you see, if ever you truly see one, will be a deep and personal experience and not one you’d care to share in the broad light of day.

  “And that’s the way it was with the Lucases. They wouldn’t ever have told anybody about this ghost, only it troubled them so much, giving them no sleep and no peace of any sort. Till finally they took their fret and sorrow to Aunt Sherlie Howes in her gray little living room in her little house out on Devlin Road. If anybody could make things clear, she could.